Zcash holders support faster transactions, bitcoin-style halvings in NU7 sentiment polls

Zcash’s community has spoken, and it turns out they really like Bitcoin’s playbook. Sentiment polls for the privacy coin’s upcoming Network Upgrade 7 closed on September 14 with 98.9% of ZEC coinholders voting to keep Bitcoin-style halvings rather than switching to a smoothed issuance model.

The same polls revealed strong support for cutting the target block interval from 75 seconds down to 25 seconds, a change that would effectively triple the network’s transaction throughput without touching ZEC’s hard supply cap of 21 million coins.

What the polls actually decided

The advisory polls covered several proposals bundled under the NU7 umbrella, drawing input from both ZEC coinholders and the Zcash Community Advisory Panel, known as ZCAP. Two proposals stood out.

The first, and most decisive, concerned the Network Sustainability Mechanism outlined in ZIP 234. That proposal would have replaced the traditional halving cycle with a smoothed issuance curve, gradually tapering new coin creation instead of slashing it in half at fixed intervals. The community rejected the idea with near-unanimity, preferring to stick with halvings roughly every four years. The next one is anticipated in late 2028.

The second major proposal, ZIP 218, calls for reducing block times from 75 seconds to 25 seconds. This too received broad community backing.

On the question of reissuance timing for coins taken out of circulation, poll participants favored a later start date of 2031, showing some divergence from earlier proposals that suggested moving sooner. The polls also addressed deprecating the legacy Sprout pool, Zcash’s original shielded transaction system.

Privacy adoption is quietly accelerating

Approximately 4.89 million ZEC currently sit in shielded pools, representing about 28.9% of the total circulating supply. Shielded transactions now account for 59.3% of recent network activity.

The engineering reality

Advisory polls are just that: advisory. The results signal community preference, but they don’t flip a switch. Implementing the accepted proposals requires further development work, comprehensive testing, and formal consensus activation through Zcash’s ZIP mechanism.

The halving decision carries long-term implications for miner incentives. Each halving cuts the block reward in half, and eventually miners need transaction fees alone to justify securing the network. Bitcoin faces the same question on a longer timeline. Zcash, with a smaller market cap and less fee revenue, may confront it sooner.